The Ares Virus

by A P Bateman

  Stein held up a hand. “It's OK. Nobody else knows. She wanted to keep it real tight until we could get underneath this whole thing. Trouble is, I was up to my neck in meetings and briefings and Delaney took the reins on her own. Wanted to get stuck right in. She started checks on the bioresearch facility in Washington and called the coroner's office in Montpelier, Vermont.”

  “And?”

  “And, nothing. I left her on a lone crusade and didn't hear from her after that. But I know one thing, she had no time for that stupid text messaging, and she would never have signed off using a letter ‘E’. Delaney was a tough-ass, she would use the letter ‘D’. Everybody called her Delaney, hell, even in her answer phone message she uses her surname.”

  Stone looked thoughtful. “So the killer used Delaney to get Bartlett into a bar and out into the open. Either they wanted Bartlett, or wanted Bartlett out of the way. We need to check out this bar on ninth, and we need to make a call to the local precinct and find out if there was any related incident in the vicinity. You've obviously got Bartlett's number on Delaney's cell phone. If we can get a call through to her and a satellite fix, we've got her. At least find the phone cell she’s in.”

  “And involve the whole bureau? The very thing Delaney wanted to avoid at all costs?”

  “What then?”

  “Delaney told her she was going to involve me. She'll either trust me or she won't. If can get in touch with her, maybe we can arrange a meet?”

  “Great.”

  Stein held up a hand. “OK, that's what I can do. Now, it seems to me that you still have jack and shit, and I'm holding one or two more aces.”

  Stone stared at him. It was cold and hard and told the FBI agent not to go any further. “I don't like to be taken for a ride,” he said, coldly.

  “Not taking you anywhere, Agent Stone. And certainly not in the vicinity of Isobel Bartlett. Hell, if I involved the whole bureau, went official you'd get nowhere near her at all. Not for a while at least. And certainly not until it was probably too late for your investigation. With a letter from the President or not, things can soon get delayed.”

  Stone suddenly realized that he had approached this investigation with the full weight of the President behind him, but he guessed that some people just don't get pushed around. He suddenly started to like Special Agent Stein. The man commanded respect.

  “I think I sense a deal coming, even though, like you said, I've got jack and shit to deal with.” He smiled, relaxed a little and sat further back in his seat. “You obviously know Isobel Bartlett's reasons for taking the drives. Hey, that's a Hell of a lot more than I do. Keep going.”

  “First we check out this gin-joint, Sullivan's. Then we check with police headquarters and check their log for last night and the vicinity near the bar.”

  “Funny, sounds rather like my idea,” Stone paused. “What then?”

  “At the moment, we can't afford to involve the FBI, not officially at least. If we can arrange to meet Isobel Bartlett, bring her in somewhere neutral. I want a thorough debrief, an off-limits interview with her to aid my investigation into Delaney's murder.”

  “And that's the deal?” Stone asked, looking at the agent dubiously. “You locate her, bring her in for me, and all you want is an interview?”

  “Yeah.”

  Stone sensed there was a catch. He still had nothing to deal with. All he had was a letter. A well-read, much admired letter that hadn't cut him a great deal of slack with this man from the FBI.

  “Well, I'm indebted to you.” Stone said sincerely.

  Stein shook his head. “No. I'm indebted to your brother. He was a Hell of an agent. I owe him my life.”

  TWENTY SIX

  Isobel Bartlett had showered and taken full advantage of the night porter's extra services, ordering an extra-large latte and a Danish for breakfast. Both were from the Starbucks across the street. She had given the night porter a twenty and hadn't seen any change. The night porter had thrown in a complimentary New York Times, and she figured that he had made about five dollars from the transaction. She calculated the number of rooms and multiplied that by the number of days he most probably worked a week and decided that the guy probably made more in a year than she did, given the fact that he certainly wouldn't be declaring his extra earnings to the IRS.

  She sat back on the bed, supported upright by the pillows, as she unfolded the paper and took a mouthful of the Danish. The frosting was wet and sweet and oozed as she took a satisfying bite. She looked comfortable, taking the day slowly, contemplating her options.

  He saw everything as he watched through the Leupold sniper scope, from the hotel room across the street. He was well back inside the room, with only a few inches separating the curtains. He had made sure that there was no backlit illumination and that he could focus on her room only. The clarity of the image was crystal clear and he could read the headlines of the print on the pages of the newspaper. On the front cover of the paper was a photograph of the president conducting a speech to an audience of Marines and Navy service men and women in California. He held the crosshairs of the sight on the man's right eye and mouthed a near-silent boom. The shot would have hit. The .223 bullet would have scythed through the air, tearing a path through the sky at twelve hundred feet a second, spinning towards its target with deadly accuracy. The bullet would have hit the president's eye, pushed the power vacuum, the displaced air in front of the bullet, through the brain and out through the back of his head. The brain and bone and matter would have been sprayed across most of the room, and the body would have been clinically dead before he had finished the pull-through on the match quality trigger.

  He smiled to himself. The president would have been killed outright. It would have been the ultimate masterpiece, like Van Gogh's Sunflowers, or Michael Angelo's David. One day, he would achieve his own masterpiece. A kill so public and important on the world stage that it would be talked about for decades. After his masterpiece he would retire. He had no desire to kill this particular president, no more than his desire to experience the thrill of the ultimate kill. He had no particular political persuasion, no care for politics. He couldn't even remember if he had ever voted. Like so much of his life, he couldn't remember many things.

  He watched as Isobel Bartlett turned the pages of the newspaper and scanned the headlines. She was attractive, in a plain, if not unpretentious sort of way. She wore no makeup, just a little colorless lip-gloss, which shined understatedly in the light. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her skin was clear of imperfections. She looked wholesome and cute, the sort of girl he would have liked to take home to meet his mother and announce an engagement or something. Only, he had no recollection of ever having known his mother, couldn't picture her or remember the tone of her voice. There was nothing of her in his memories. However, he did dream about a woman he assumed was his mother, but it was the sort of dream that faded and died the moment he tried to recollect.

  The thought made him sad. He put the assault rifle down on the table in front of him and sat back in the chair. There was nothing in his memories, not in the way other people would remember. He would watch television, but would seldom be interested unless it was a classic film with old fashioned, classic actors like Steve McQueen, James Coburn or Clint Eastwood, or the older black and white films starring the likes of James Stewart, Audey Murphy or Randolph Scott.

  Other people had friends or memories of good times, or something. But he had nothing. Nothing, but the knowledge of how to live from day-to-day, or how to kill. He could not remember where he had gained this knowledge, or when he had learned it. He remembered his time in the army and he remembered training hard physically in California and Florida, but the why and the how were blurred. He remembered a dojo and karate. And he remembered learning to surf and a pretty girl who had held his hand on the beach, where later they had made love by a fire fuelled by driftwood. He could not recall her name, nor whether he had seen her again. His contracts came via e-mail
or text or Facebook messaging, but he could not remember having ever subscribed to an internet server, or having ever bought the laptop from which he worked.

  He could feel the throbbing starting in his head. It was distant and it was faint, but he knew it would soon build and pulse and make him sick. It always did when he started to question his existence, his own mortality. He got up quickly from the chair and walked across the room where he picked up the plastic bottle of painkillers from the bedside table. They were prescription and extremely potent, capable of settling the strongest of migraines, just so long as he could swallow a couple in time. He fiddled with the bottle and the childproof cap, shaking the contents inside like a set of castanets, frantic to get to the tablets inside. He could feel the sensation of flickering from the periphery of his sight. He knew the flickering would grow to a frightening crescendo, from which the only escape was to sleep in complete darkness and shut himself off from the outside world.

  He couldn't risk it. He could not risk being disabled whilst his quarry was across the street. He needed to stay with her, be ready to move at a moment’s notice and the urgency of the situation made him struggle harder with the cap of the bottle. The cap suddenly gave way, relinquishing the contents over the bed and onto the floor. He grabbed at a couple and swallowed them down without water. He walked to the laptop on the table and watched the screen. The software was simple and easy to follow and had been custom-written for the task. The screen showed a detailed city map and two colored markers. One was the location of the laptop the other was the location of the satellite transceivers that he had secreted into the lining of Isobel Bartlett's overnight bag and her jacket after he had lured her out of her hotel room under the premise of meeting Elizabeth Delaney.

  The target was still in place or at least her luggage and jacket were and that was good enough for him. His head ached a little less now and he breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that he had caught the sensation in time.

  He was grateful of the prescription tablets, but like everything else in his life, he had no idea where they had come from.

  TWENTY SEVEN

  “Sure, Saturday night specials. You get them in every week. They just sit there waiting to get picked up by some guy. Usually unhappily married women after no string sex. We see it all the time. A woman comes in, buys a drink and waits it out. Sooner or later she either gets the come on from a guy, or they try their luck with one of us at the end of the evening.” He smiled and placed the glass he’d been wiping dry with a cloth on the mirrored shelf behind him. “You'd be surprised just how many women come on to us bar tenders at the end of the night. Hell, it's just another tip, when all's said and done.” He picked up another glass from the wash crate and polished it with the soft cloth. “They come over as desperate really, but hey, I'm out of there before first light. Kind of saves on the awkwardness in the morning.”

  Stone looked at the bartender impassively. “And was she a sure thing, desperate?”

  “Sure, just the same as all the rest.”

  “And you made it with her at the end of your shift?”

  “No.”

  “So she was a sure thing and looked desperate for a man,” Stone paused and smiled coldly. “But not desperate enough to get laid with the likes of you or your buddy. Even if it meant a drink on the house.”

  “Yes. I mean no ...” The bar tender frowned. “Hey!”

  “So she came on to you, but you blew her out?”

  “No.”

  “So she left with someone else,” Stone said. “Got a better offer.”

  “No. She left one her own.”

  Stone smirked. “Like I said, a better offer.” He perched himself on the barstool and picked up a handful of pistachio nuts. He picked at one and started to open it wider to pull out the kernel. “So she was a sure thing, a desperate-looking woman who was out for some Saturday night action, but failed to either get hit on, or hit on anyone else in the bar. She didn't even attempt to chat to you two gigolos behind the bar, choosing instead to simply leave, while it was still early, on a Saturday night.” Stone popped a couple nuts into his mouth and chewed slowly keeping his eyes on the bar tender's face all the while. “So maybe she was just having a quiet drink and waiting for someone. Maybe the person she was meeting simply got held up and she decided not to wait and waste her time any longer. How about that? How about when I ask you a simple question, like do you remember a woman in her early thirties coming into the bar last night? You give me a straight answer and don't elaborate a crock of shit?”

  The bar tender glanced sideways at him and nodded. “Sure, whatever ...”

  “So you remember a woman in her early thirties ...” David Stein interjected. “Around five foot-five, a hundred to one hundred and ten pounds. Black hair and light olive skin?”

  “Sure,” he replied somewhat sullen.

  David Stein took out a pocketbook and a stubby pencil. “Right, shoot. Now let's start with what she was wearing.”

  ***

  He could hear the background noise of the television and the occasional passive sound of a cough or a sigh. The aural clarity was clear and suffered no delay, just like listening to a telephone conversation. Each time there was a cough or a piece of background noise, he could see the movements or actions through the sniper scope.

  Isobel Bartlett seemed to be in a quandary. Lost in her actions. Her cell phone was beside her, but neither rang, nor was it used. She simply sat back on the bed, her legs crossed and her arms cuddling her knees. She looked sweet and innocent like a child. She was suffering, unsure of what she should do next. As far as she was concerned her friend had let her down and she was now alone in the big city. He recognized her emotional state, but had no empathy. Her vulnerability was not his concern.

  Her pain was mental, not physical like the female FBI agent's pain had been. When she had begged for him to release her from that pain, he had obliged ending it instantly with a single 9mm bullet, but only after she had told him all he had needed to know and only after she had tearfully written the text message on her cell phone. She had been hesitant, as if she had known it would be the last thing she would ever do. She had deliberated for so long on how to sign off, and he had watched as she had finally decided upon a single letter ‘E’. He had pulled the trigger the moment she had pressed the send option. He had watched the life leave her body, as he had done so many times before. There had been the odd twitch and shudder of the limbs, which sometimes followed the massive trauma of a head shot and of course a great deal of blood and matter had been lain to waste across a vast distance. She had cried for him to stop hurting her and he had obliged.

  From across the street he watched Isobel Bartlett. She looked pained by her situation. Maybe she would welcome release. All he needed was a reply to his e-mail and he would oblige. End her pain and misery for an eternity.

  ***

  The police headquarters were on Grand and Broadway. The desk sergeant was a man in his early fifties named O'Reilly. He was a big guy, who was balding and weighed about two hundred and forty pounds. Most of it was pure donut. “Yeah, break in and entry,” he paused, reading the notes from the handwritten log. “The Amsterdam Court Hotel on West Fiftieth. Got the details right here. You want the full report?”

  Stein nodded. “Please, if it's not too much trouble.”

  “Never too much trouble helping out the FBI,” he said. The tone was apparently neutral but both men could detect an undercurrent of sarcasm. The desk sergeant pressed an intercom button and waited for the reply. “Yeah Hank, I need report WAB1267. Yeah, right away.” He looked up at the two men and nodded. “Be down here in ten.” He ushered them towards a row of seats along the wall, then looked past them and at the growing line behind. “Yeah, next ...”

  ***

  She was crying. He could hear her on the receiver. It wasn't a full-blown wail, more of a gentle sob. He tightened his finger on the trigger, willing the e-mail to come through and grant him permission
to end her pain. They were taking their time, deliberating over the information that he had provided. They wanted the information on those drives, and they wanted him to retrieve them. It made him angry. Their indecisiveness. He was paid to kill, not be some kind of errand boy. He tightened his finger a little more on the match quality trigger. It only needed a gentle two-pound pull, nothing really in terms of trigger pressure. He figured he had about one and a quarter on it, and that gave him a thrill, a sensation of all-encompassing supremacy. Would it, or wouldn't it? Had he guessed the poundage correctly? Would the rifle unexpectedly kick back into his shoulder and would the 5.56mm bullet hammer into the target's forehead at twelve hundred feet a second and carry straight on through the wall? It would too, because rather than standard military ammunition the weapon was loaded with Swedish match grade .223 caliber varmint rounds. More powerful than mass produced military rounds, these had a slightly longer casing with more charge and were soft lead tipped hunting rounds designed to deform massively upon impact. He smiled at the thought of the God like supremacy he had at that exact moment. Her life was suspended in his hands. Her very existence was determined by whether he squeezed further or let go. Either action denoted the same amount of power. Should he be decisive and powerful, or should he be relenting and gracious? He released the pressure on the trigger and put the rifle back down onto the table. The act of sparing her life was somehow more rewarding at that moment. And the fact that she would never know how close it could have been filled him with a contended sense of all-powerful emotion.

  The laptop's screen was still on the e-mail inbox. There had been no sound announcing an incoming message and no sign on the screen. He would have to wait for the order a little longer.